Profile: Laurent Nkunda

Renegade DR Congo general says he is fighting to protect the Tutsi people.

23 Jan 2009 12:43 GMT

Nkunda says he is fighting to protect the Tutsi people, but is himself accused of war crimes [AFP]

He says the government in DR Congo has not protected them from the Rwandan Hutu militia which escaped from Rwanda after helping slaughter 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.

He also says he is fighting to liberate all of DR Congo from a corrupt government.

Talking to Al Jazeera in November, Nkunda defended the actions of the CNDP, saying the group was "looking for a solution" to the country's many problems.

"If you can compare Congo with other countries, there is no life, there is no economy, there is no salary, there is no administration, no justice - so how can we think we are destroying anything?" he said.

Fighting in Rwanda

Born in 1967, with Rwandan roots, Nkunda began his military career in the Tutsi-led Rwandan forces which eventually stopped the country's genocide.

He returned to his homeland, at the time called Zaire, to fight with rebels headed by Laurent-Desire Kabila, who in 1997 overthrew the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko with the help of the Rwandan and Angolan armies.

When the Congo war started in 1998, eventually drawing in six African countries, Nkunda became a senior commander in a Rwandan-backed Congolese rebel group which held a big area in the eastern part of the country.

After a peace deal ended the war in 2003, Nkunda joined Congo's army but quit in 2004 to launch the CNDP.

Nkunda led 4,000 soldiers to rise up and capture the South Kivu capital of Bukavu in 2004. An international arrest warrant was issued against him for alleged war crimes committed while occupying the city, but Congolese officials say this has expired.